Telecom Lobbyists Whine About State Net Neutrality Efforts They Helped Create

Telecom Lobbyists Whine About State Net Neutrality Efforts They Helped Create

6 years ago
Anonymous $gIi3-PxxKB

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180307/09452639377/telecom-lobbyists-whine-about-state-net-neutrality-efforts-they-helped-create.shtml

In the wake of the FCC's extremely-unpopular repeal of net neutrality, more than half the states in the country are now pursuing their own net neutrality rules. Some of these efforts are taking the form of actual legislation that closely mirrors the discarded FCC rules (as seen in Oregon and Washington), while others involve the creation of executive orders adjusting state policies to ban states from doing business with ISPs that engage in anti-competitive net neutrality violations. In most instances these rules carve out vast exemptions for "reasonable network management," only outlawing anti-competitive behavior.

ISPs have of course been quick to whine about the unfairness of having to adhere to 50 different rules governing net neutrality, even though most implementations closely mirror the FCC rules these same lobbyists just successfully killed. US Telecom, a lobbying organization primarily managed by AT&T, lamented the unfairness of this scenario in a conversation with the Washington Post: